The
piece specifically focuses on new legislation in Texas, where lawmakers have passed
a number of abortion-related regulations that are decimating providers’ ability
to offer safe, accessible abortion care to the women of the state. The
editorial notes:

“More than 40 clinics around the state
performed the procedure legally and safely when the law took effect a year ago.
Today fewer than half of those clinics are still in business in a state where
the population has more than doubled over four decades.”

As
the editors emphasize (and has been repeated by top medical experts in the country
– the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists) these new regulations—which impose expensive, superfluous
“safety measures” such as wider hallways and men’s locker rooms—will not actually
make abortion any safer than it already is and will do nothing to reduce
women’s need for abortion services. The laws will only impede a woman’s ability
to access these services, despite her constitutionally guaranteed right to do
so.

As
the Texas law takes full effect, many more clinics are expected to be forced to
shut down, and it is estimated that less than ten clinics will be able to
remain open. In poorer, more rural areas such as the Rio Grande Valley, the
current closures are already forcing women to travel hundreds of miles to
access legal abortion services. For many, factors such as work, cost, lack of
transportation, immigration check points, and mandatory waiting periods make
this trip an impossibility. As the Post observes,
many women will be forced to seek illegal—and possibly unsafe—options closer to
their homes.

“Very
possibly, some women will die as a result; most of these will be poor,” write
the editors. The situation in Texas is dire, and at this point it is only
getting worse. The Post piece nails
not only the women’s health crisis at hand, but also the constitutional crisis.
“In huge swaths of the nation’s second most populous state,” they write, “Roe v. Wade has been effectively undone
by the legislature.”